Archive for January, 2010

If you’re thinking of entering The Room down under, I hope you already have a ticket because it’s sold out! It seems like an amazing show plus an introduction and Q&A with cult movie guru and now author Michael Adams (Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro Zombies) by Michael Adams.
Click here to read more about it!

Julie Washington of Cleveland’s, The Plain Dealer, digs deep to discover what makes THE ROOM tick and stick:

“Watch out for members of a strange new cult hanging around the Cedar Lee Theatre. You can spot them by their bags of plastic spoons, strange accents and hankering for pizza that’s half pineapple and Canadian bacon, half artichoke and pesto, light on the cheese.

They are harmless, even if their taste in movies is sick. They are fans of the latest cult-movie sensation, “The Room,” a movie so bad it’s been called “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of bad movies.” ”

Following its release in 2003, some critics were quick to tag The Room as amongst the worst films made, mixing as it does cavernous plot holes with lip bitingly bad acting and soft focus production values. Straight to DVD, or worse, seemed inevitable, but that was not to be the case for The Room. Instead, the film has evolved into a cult phenomenon with fans around the world.

Joel Crary has a great review on his blog- “Something about watching a group of people file out through a field of plastic spoons, still cracking jokes after a shared experience of such lunacy, did my heart good. The guy in front of me who loudly complained that he was trying to watch the movie was especially kidding.”

A couple of weekends ago, I witnessed a fascinating merging of viral videos and cult film culture.

It was a collision of the individual experience of being blown away by the outlandish, random absurdity of a YouTube viral video (think about the first time you saw The Shining Recut) and the communal experience of attending an audience-participation movie event, such as a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It was deliriously fun. And it was all thanks to one man’s artistic vision and determination.

Getting inside the head of any film director — let alone one as enigmatic as Tommy Wiseau — can be a daunting challenge. Speaking to me about his cult hit The Room, Mr. Wiseau would not talk about the film’s financing or any potential profit. Little is known of his country of birth or much of his background. Tommy Wiseau is a mystery, and that’s how the director likes it.

In my interview with Wiseau, I was able to peer a bit behind the curtain at one of Hollywood’s most infamous filmmakers. What I found was … How do I put this? What I found was difficult to understand.

Room fans, this is the interview you have been waiting for. Everyone else, hold on tight. Tommy Wiseau in his own words, after the jump …

From MovieLine: Over the past two weeks, James Franco relied on brooding stares, sinister laughter and one-note monologues to maximize the illusion of his character’s evil persona. But during today’s episode of General Hospital, the performance art-motivated actor tapped into something much deeper: textbook soap opera skills. Franco was angry, so James Franco raised his voice, pointedly gestured, and adopted all of the body language taught in the “Fury” week of Acting 101. It was a scene with such formulaic passion that it immediately brought to mind Tommy Wiseau’s brilliantly craptastic performance in The Room.

Tangy and juicy! Tommy Wiseau sits down The Citrus Report to discuss The Room phenomenon as well as future projects.

Immediately after getting off the phone with Tommy Wiseau I couldn’t help but think of a line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”